The Breakdown
Besides being an actor and graphic designer Christo Graham is one of those heart and soul singer/songwriters. You can’t imagine a day when there’s not a tune or lyrical snippet going around in his head. There’s something spontaneous and vibrant about his music, built from a process of lo-fi home recording where Graham plays most of the instruments (guitars, bass, piano, drums, cello, recorder and musical saw) himself. Occasionally friends get drafted in to help out and local studios in Stratford, Ontario buff up the finished articles but there’s an honesty and lack of affectation about Christo Graham. Although he’s eleven albums down, initially self-released and lately via Toronto’s We Are Busy Bodies, each new set of songs from Christo sound fresh and reach out to different places. So making a space for his latest collection ‘Good Covers’ (out now on WABB) is a recommendation that shouldn’t be passed over without a good reason.
The album sees Graham return to the folkier solo roots of the ‘Turnin’ and ‘Music For Horses’ records rather than the pop-operatic ‘Clown Riot’ or rootsy band excursions of ‘Grahams General Store’. Those latter two releases were fine but it’s in the setting where he shapes his songs alone, as he does once again on ‘Good Covers’, that his singular tune-smithery strikes more directly. Take the gently swishing You Are Your Own Small Town if you need any convincing of Graham’s grasp of melancholic magic. A bright guitar finger pick tumbling into a warm pool of electric piano and whipped along by snare whispers frames this sharp-tongued demolition of character. “Judge and jury/ executor/ pupil and tutor/target and the shooter/ duck and cover hold your ground / You are your own small town” leaves nothing more to be said except a sense that Graham may even being singing about himself. The tune hits as hard as any encounter with early Conor Oberst.
A country twang and swoon is never too far away with Graham’s music and ‘Good Covers’ again nods to those classic influences while spiking them with a wry wit. Album opener Tell Me If You Like Me sets the hoedown tone with its chirpy banjo and folksy warmth, all ruffled by the singer’s quirky desperation. “Be my leaf pile/ Be my friend” is some chat-up line. Hidin’ Your Hurtin‘ goes further. Joined by actor/singer Brian d’Arcy James, the tune aches with a Townes-like yearning offset by a sprinkle of honky tonk piano and a chunky C & W strum.
Despite such lingering reference points Christo Graham’s songs have an authenticity which elevate them way above any pastiche. There is nothing superficial about the simple sorrow of I Changed My Mind with its Will Oldham-esque imagery (“Their lustre crumbled from them like a rind”) and its heart string puller of a guitar pattern. As always with Graham’s music, on ‘Good Covers’ the settings consistently serve the sentiment . You can’t help being buoyed up by the optimism of Not What It Looks Like To Me with its breezy tingle of piano and chirpy slide guitar. Here we have confirmation of Graham’s astute connection with the classic Jimmy Webb song credentials. Such love of early seventies pop rock also comes through on the sweet innocence of Heather, where the mellotron toned strings swoon, and with the swirling sincerity of A Face To The Name, a tune which needs nothing more than a guitar, voice and a piano’s chiming spell.
Although for ‘Good Covers’ Graham keeps the instrumental palette customarily simple, the album still shows him continuing to test out new sonic waters. Both Invisible Dice and its companion Invisible Dice Roll Again lean into gothic Americana, the former built on nerve tangling Fahey fretwork and the re-worked version drifting effortlessly along a Gene Clark pathway. Inspired by Townes Van Zandt’s last Toronto concert shortly before he passed, the pair of songs touchingly imagine the rawness and reverence of the occasion.
‘Good Covers’ closes with Graham stretching into the mystic with the extended Time Can Only Tell. Developed from just an ascending chord sequence, some hovering chapel organ and Graham’s soothing, sincere vocal, it’s a heart stopping moment on the album, a song with a hymnal quality and a deep slowcore resonance.
Recorded in three weeks at the family house with a new born close by, his four year old on drum patrol and wife Kelly somehow finding time for some delicate harmonies, ‘Good Covers’ is a real home recording. The result is a set of Christo Graham songs which readily meet the acid songwriter’s test – they’ll strike a chord and turn your head, played whenever, wherever and by whoever.
Get your copy of ‘Good Covers‘ by Christo Graham from your local record store or direct from We Are Busy Bodies HERE
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